Matthew Schneider, MBA, CPM
Design Leader, Mentor and Consultant
Greater Philadelphia Area
matthewscottdesign3@gmail.com
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My Latest Journey: Building a Global Design Organization
A shift in thinking toward a more user-centric organization began with my joining the company to build the user experience practice, process, and team. During this time I have focused on bringing UX and design thinking to the forefront of our operations and aligning key initiatives with our larger corporate strategies.
Early on I identified the need for an overhaul of the end-to-end customer/user journey. I started by building the first UX/UI team from 1 visual designer to 11 global product designers. For the first time
in company history, strategy, process, and user-centered thinking were brought to a globally dispersed product portfolio of desktop and web applications in an effort to deliver a consistent experience and unified end-to-end workflow across our apps.
The past 5 years have been an evolution that I have planned, positioned, and executed. Even though the journey has just begun, we have made significant measurable improvements to the end-to-end-user experience in that time. Below is a look at the milestones on the company's journey to an intuitive consistent experience that delights our users.
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The Challenge
A globally dispersed product portfolio that had been developed or acquired in silos over that last 20 years with little to no thought into the UI/UX or overall end to end customer experience.
Initial stages of growth
At the time of the team's inception, the UX/UI practice was embedded into the engineering teams. Starting bottom-up with what at the time was our flagship suite of products, the team began to establish the first product style guide to bring a cohesive look and feel to our product portfolio. This worked well at first but was not scalable as the team and product coverage grew.
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As the team grew, so did the need for team design processes as well as a cadence on working with other areas of the business. With the help of newly formed Agile practice, we built the companies' first Agile methodologies for the product and engineering teams.
In an effort to align practices, I modeled the new design team after the product scrum teams to bring oversight to a new global design team.
Leading / Learning from our mistakes through growth
As the team grew so did our visual style guide. We quickly found our methodologies, Although good for a single product was not scalable across multiple products and development teams working on different technologies. Out of this need, our design system was born to deliver a consistent visual language to our engineers using the latest design practices.
A important parallel initiative
As the product experience team pivoted into the world of design automation. I brought to realization the next aspect of an end to end experience. With a team of graphic and web designers, the creative services team embarked on a 2-year journey re-imagining the position of the company in the marketplace as well as the services that surround our products. In that time we planned and executed over 1000 design requests across the organization.
A Change in Vision
With a change in focus and vision, I brought renewed interest in bringing velocity to the experience design practice. With the design system automation well underway and creative services transforming the way, our products show up in the marketplace. I shifted focus to ensuring the voice of our customers was represented in everything that we did. We set out to establish the company's first customer data model and process of how we go about user research, inquiries, and focus groups.
A new approach to a user community
Our customers are our strongest evangelists, but due to the sensitive nature of our clients' workflows and subject matter reaching them consistently across the globe was proving difficult. In late 2019, I lead the reimagination of our shuttered community as a way to bring together the services and solutions surrounding our products on the path to realizing that cohesive end to end experience. It was also a way for the product design team to access once difficult to reach customers into one platform.
The new community now is the hub of user activity and knowledge. It is an active, engaged ecosystem of users, partners, and team members sharing ideas to help answer the most challenging questions of data.
The Community provides a vehicle for collaboration which in turn drives demand. Demand creates opportunities by influencing buyers and driving adoption. Adoption means a greater market share, which ultimately drives revenue. The new community now is the hub of user activity and knowledge. It is an active, engaged ecosystem of users, partners, and team members sharing ideas to help answer the most challenging questions of data.
In its first 6 months
1,000+
300+
3,500+
500+
150+
Interested Partners and Users
Companies and Partners
Monthly Page Views
User Generated Topics and Posts
Average Active Sessions
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